Bes sighed to himself as he looked out upon the solitary mountain lake that he had called home for all twenty seven cycles of his life.

It was all coming to and end in only a few short days.

For some it was dream come true. He’d remembered his childhood friends daydreaming about their twenty seventh birthdays when the news would come down from the city that -HE- was the “Hidden prince.”

It was not an ambition for Bes. It was certainly something he, a simple eel farmer’s son, had not been expecting. Though, in retrospect, the signs were there.

For the better part of his childhood, Bes had thought that the eel farmer, Gabier and the thick Chromian man who lived with him, Aaron, were his biological parents. He’d eventually learned that wasn’t the case, but a curiosity for his origins had never been aroused in him. Aaron and Gabier were the only family he had ever known until the minister had turned up on his twenty-fifth birthday, a harbinger of thkings to come.

It had been a particularly dark night on the mountain lake. He’d just finished his daily chores, feeding and seeding eels on the far end of the lake. It had taken him longer than usual, since a particularly violent red-toothed eel had escaped into the usually docile green spine-back eel pod.

The spine-backs were delicate and small, but when threatened, they would band together in large numbers, and... Well, suffice it to say that the red-tooth hadn’t stood a chance. Bes felt bad for it, despite it being one of the more terrifying creatures they cared for, as he looked down upon the lifeless body that took up most of the space in the bucket he had been using to carry the feed. He could have left it to the Spine-Backs, but it was no use letting them get a taste for other eel blood.

As soon as he reached the near side of the lake, Bes felt another presence fall into step beside him. He didn’t have to look up to know that it was Aaron. For all his life, it seemed like Aaron was around exactly when he was needed.

“What you got there, kid?” he asked. Despite living on Dysprosia and speaking the language fluently for at least as long as Bes had been alive, Aaron’s heavy Chromian accent had not abated in the slightest.

“I didn’t know it was harvest time,” he said.

“Got inta’ the spiney pod,” Bes replied with a frown. “They got ‘im before I could get ‘im back out. Poor fella. At least we might feast tonight, if you have to look at the bright side of things.”

“Mmm,” Aaron said. He glanced away from Bes and stared off into the distance, suddenly far-away from the conversation.

“What?” Bes ventured to speak after a long moment of silence. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“Yes...no.” Aaron paused and smiled ruefully at Bes as he slowly ran his big hand through his hair. “Can you do me a favor, kiddo?”

“Sure.” Bes nodded agreeably. Aaron hardly asked for anything; Bes didn’t think it right to begrudge him any kind of favor.

“Just, remember this,” he said as he glanced over Bes’ shoulder out onto the lake and the higher peaks of the the mountains beyond.

“Take a deep breath and remember all of this.”

Bes obediently did as he was told, even though he wasn’t quite sure what Aaron was getting at. He had no intention of forgetting the lake, especially since he wasn’t ever intending on leaving.

**

It took them almost a half hour to reach the house. It had been eerily quiet the entire way, with Aaron immersed in his own thoughts, and Bes attempting to understand what had been asked of him.

When they arrived, Bes had thumped the bucket of eel down on the wrap around wooden porch of the cabin, pulled off his shoes and wandered inside where he was faced with the man he called father, Gabiel, and a woman he didn’t know. The Minister. It was she who carried the news that was to change his life forever.

***

Sanaa had come to them two years before with the purpose of conveying the news that he, Bes, was the first born prince of Dysprosia, who, as was custom, has been sent away upon birth to be raised as a commoner in anonymity. His identity was unknown to all except for a select few. It was to keep him safe, so he was told, and so that he may intimately know and learn the ways of his people. It was, what so many young Dysprosian boys imagined themselves to be.

Sanaa had arrived on his twenty fifth year, not only to inform him of the news, but to become his teacher. Bes had thought he’d left schooling behind for good once he’d departed his teenage years, but as it turned out, he had much to learn about the governance of a planet.

As the two year teaching time went by more quickly than he would have liked, it made Bes feel ill. He didn’t feel like royalty. He felt like an eel farmer, and no amount of teaching Sanaa could do would make him feel otherwise. It was his twenty-seventh year though, and it was his time. It was his time to leave the lake and everything he knew behind. He didn’t think it was fair.

***

Aaron approached him that day as he sat on the porch rail and looked out on the place he had called home for most of his life.

“What’s up kiddo?” he asked, and Bes turned slightly to smile sadly at him.

“I’m remembering, Aaron,” he said. “Tomorrow I leave for the capitol. You’re coming with me.”

Aaron looked startled at the command and he sputtered out a few words of protest.

“Do you have another family out there, Soldier?” Bes asked. “I mean a real family? A Chromian family? Is that where you go on holiday?”

Aaron’s eyes grew wider at the question, as if he suddenly remembered something that he had forgotten a long time ago.

“No, Bes,” he said quietly. “You are my real family. You and Gabiel.”

“Odd little family,” Bes muttered. “We are not blood.”

“Does that matter?”

“Of course not,” Bes said. “That’s why you’re coming with me. I am not a man of the world. They expect me to just dig up roots and swan off to the city, leave my family behind?”

“But Bes...”

“Sanaa has explained many things to me these past two years in preparation for my transition,” he said. “Are you not a Chromian mercenary in the employ of the Queen to be my...bodyguard as it were?”

“I suppose,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t say I was a mercenary. Perhaps once upon a time.”

“Good then...” Bes screwed his face up into a twist of deep concentration. “Maaybe...”

He sighed, and his muscles relaxed.

“Perhaps, I might convince her to keep you on in the same capacity when I move to the city. Would that be alright? If she does not, then I will just... I’ll hire you myself. I suppose I am a rich man now.”

“Suppose you are that,” Aaron chuckled.

“What do you say?” Bes stuck out his hand.

Aaron regarded the proffered appendage, smiled a bit to himself, and gave it a hearty shake.

“To be honest,” he said, “I was kind of hoping for this. I didn’t want to pressure you.”“Pressure me?” Bes laughed a somewhat nervous and high pitched laugh. “Are you kidding? This is a relief. I don’t feel so alone anymore.”

“It is a big change,” Aaron replied. He moved closer and sat beside Bes on the porch-rail.

“Just my luck too.” Bes smirked. “The only guy in Hightown to have never dreamed of being the hidden prince. I’d have been happy right here as an eel farmer forever.”

Aaron chuckled at him in return.

“You’re meant for bigger things,” he said. “Don’t you want to see what the universe has to offer? There’s a lot more out there than just eels.”“I like eels,” Bes muttered stubbornly.

Aaron smiled at him then glanced down at his feet.

"You certainly do have a flair for this," he admitted.

"Yeah, so I do," Bes muttered. "And I suppose I'm leaving it all behind. Everything about me, my whole identity... It was just an abstract idea two years ago when Sanaa showed up. It didn't really mean anything back then. I still had my life, but now... Now I'm expected to just toss it all away and become this prince, like it doesn't mean anything at all? Reality's just starting to hit me. I never thought twice of it before, but it's a fucked up system, isn't it Aaron?"

"It's the way things are," he replied. "I won't pretend to understand."

"What was it like on Chromia?" Bes ventured to ask. It was a question he remembered asking many times before, and many times before, Aaron tactfully evaded it.

"Did you have a family?"

"Had, yes," Aaron replied.

Bes could tell he was struggling with the answer and felt momentarily guilty for bringing the subject up, but this was a man he had grown up with, a man he thought had been involved with his father for the greater part of is childhood, a man he thought of, not as the tenant he had posted as, nor as the bodyguard he had turned out to be.

Aaron was his father as much as Gabiel was.

"You don't have to talk about them if you don't want to," Bes said as he lay a tentative hand upon Aaron's bicep.

"It was a long time ago," he mumbled and made no attempt to remove Bes's hand.

"Were you in the Chromian war?" he asked.

It was a question to far, Bes realized as the expression on Aaron's face turned into a sudden scowl. He moved away from the railing, shrugging away the casual contact that Bes had initiated.

"I'm sorry." Bes looked down at his feet in shame. "It's only that I feel I don't even know you anymore. I want things to say the same, but I know that they can't. It's like I don't even know what's real anymore. I've been lied to for my entire life, and for what?"

"It is the custom of the land," Aaron replied. His he had crossed his arms over his chest and stood facing Bes with an impassive look on his face. "I cannot attempt to explain it; I am simply a Chromian refugee who stumbled upon this planet at the right time."

Bes stood there, at a loss for words, attempting to reconcile his planet's customs with his own feelings. The phrase, 'It isn't fair', was trampling around his brain like a herd of rabid whiptails, but he knew it was no use to speak it out loud again. His fate had been sealed the moment of he had been born.

Aaron seemed to take pity on his vexation, sighed and pointed his way into the house.

"Perhaps Gabiel, or Sanaa can better explain?"

"They've explained it to me. All this subterfuge, all this lying..." he murmured. "Just so the Prince doesn't grow up a spoiled brat." He let out a derisive laugh and shook his head. "It seemed somewhat logical when I was growing up. That was when I was just an anonymous kid on in a far away mountain town with a father and his tenant. I just wish it wasn't me."

Bes scooted from his own place on the rail and trudged past Aaron into the warmly lit cabin. There he found Gabiel and Sanaa drinking tea ensconced in some sort of eel related conversation, and he couldn't help but smile. Eel related conversation had always been Gabiel's bread and butter (or Jellied Eel as it were).

He approached and took a seat beside Gabiel and noticed a fishbowl in the middle of the table with a single tiny golden eel swimming in it.

"What's that?" He hunched over the table and lay his head on his crossed arms so that he might be eye level with the tank as he watched the tiny hatchling swimming furiously around in its circle.

"Please!" Gabiel scoffed. "I know you know what that is! Tell the minister."

"Yeah, Um..." Bes sat back up and ran a hand sheepishly through his short white hair. Though not the customary shoulder length or longer style that was all the rage for the Dysprosian male, it made leaning down over eel pods a far less messy affair.

"Well, it's a Golden Eel," he said. "Pride and joy of the Gabiel Eel Farm."

"Yes!" Gabiel puffed his chest out and gave Bes a pat on the back as any proud father would. "And this is a gift for you, my son."

Bes pulled the tank closer to him and dipped his hand into it. He noticed Sanaa flinch at his action and he smiled up at her as the baby eel swam a serpentine path around his fingers. He could feel the slight tingle of it's tiny body brushing against him as it did so.

"Don't worry, Minister Sanaa," he said. "Goldens are completely harmless, and pretty to look at, and they fetch a high price in the markets." He found himself glancing sharply up at Gabiel.

"So why are you giving it to me? " he asked. "You can turn a tidy profit on just one of these alone!"

"I want you to remember this place," he replied simply, and Bes was reminded again of the promise he had made to Aaron two years previously.

"I won't forget," Bes promised, to Gabiel this time. He reached across the table and clutched at his hand.

Gabiel smiled at him, his wrinkled old face full of affection.

"Come," he said. "I have a meal ready in the kitchen. Your favorite, and you need your rest, for the journey tomorrow will be a long one indeed."

"Yes," Bes murmured.

"Our I-GAS escort will be here in the morning," Sanaa spoke up.

Bes didn't reply. He remove his hand from the eel tank, a feeling of dread began to creep through him from his toes to the top of his head.